If he's stumbling into vegetable gardening, "Commonsense Vegetable Gardening for the South" is my Bible for veggie gardening. Having grown up in Illinois and spending 10 years in Alaska, the timing of when to plant here in Texas was my biggest obstacle. You can grow various things year-round, you just need to know when to plant, and what varieties do well here. This book is great for that. When he gets good, then he can experiment! This book is out of print, but you can generally find them used on Amazon. The authors have a new one out called "The Southern Kitchen Garden," but I really like the old one better. Here is a link that might be useful: Commonsense Vegetable Gardening Book

Oh, yum, nothing like some nice 5 month old chips and salsa, Haley! lol I hope your BIL has a strong constitution. :) I never caught MIL regifting the things we had given her, but when we cleaned out her house after she died, I think I came across about 3 things that we had given her over the course of 20+ years. And we had given her nice, pricey things. She kept one afghan, one of those heavy woven ones, and a clock made of inlaid woods and a handmade quilting basket. I remember snorting out loud once when she exclaimed "oh you always give the best gifts!". Woody and I both laughed because she never displayed or used barely any of the things we gave her but was always so proud of the tacky junk that her great-nieces and nephews sent up, stuff like the toilet piggy bank that "flushed" when you put money in it. Yeah, she liked that a lot. lol And the motion activated frog. I regift, too, though, so I don't really have a problem with it IF the regift fits the recipient. Otherwise you're just being cheap. I would hate to get caught at it because I don't like hurting someone's feelings, but I am not going to keep something around me that I don't like and won't use, I'll donate it to the thrift shop if I don't have a friend that would like it.

Boy do I remember the sugar camp. When I was a kid on the farm we had a wooden shed about 18' x 30' with a 5' sliding door on both ends. Inside the shed there was a huge stone fireplace with the chimney on one end of the building and the firebox extending nearly the full length of the room. The top of the firebox was covered with a steel pan 16' long, 5' wide and about 8" deep. The pan was set so the end near the chimney was about 3" higher than the opposite end where the opening to the firebox was. Along the right wall there was 600 tin & 450 wooden buckets stacked upside down from floor to ceiling. During the month of February there was still too much snow & mud to use wagons so we hitched a team of draft horses to a home made wooden sled called a "Stone Boat" and we would cut & haul firewood until we had at least 4 to 5 cords stacked just outside the sugar house door. About the last week of February we would fill 15 or 20 ten gallon milk cans with water and haul them down to the sugar house on the stone boat, then we would put the water in the sugar pan and start the fire. When the water was warmed a bit we began washing the buckets and loading them on the stone boat, then off to the woods to hang the buckets. Using a hand brace & bit we would drill a 3/8" diameter hole in the bark of the maple tree stopping just at the cambria layer (the internal layer between the bark & the wood of the tree). We then used a hammer to drive in a "Spile" which is a little tubular tap and we then hung a bucket on the spile and snapped a sheet metal lid on the bucket. (1 spile for each 12" of circumferance around the tree.) In an average year we would put out about 800 buckets scattered throughout about 45 acres of woods. We then laid two 50gal wooden cider barrels sideways on the stone boat so the bung hole on the side of the barrels was on top and chained the barrels in place and we set a huge copper funnel in one of the bung holes and stacked about a dozen 5gal buckets on the stone boat, hitched up the team and headed for the wood. As we wound our way along the roadway through the woods we stopped every 100ft or so and we each grabbed two 5 gallon buckets and went to the trees were we poured the sugar water from the buckets on the trees into our 5gal buckets and carried it back and poured it into the barrels on the stone boat. When both barrels were full we went back to the sugar house and parked the stone boat on a hill outside the side window of the sugar house and used a rubber hose to siphon the sugar water from the stone boat into the evaporator pan on the fireplace. We then stoked up the fire and stood around the sugar house a few minutes to warm up, while the men had a few drinks from the hard cider jug, then we boarded the stone boat and headed out to the woods again, generally hauling at least two and sometimes three loads of sugar water a day from the woods to the sugar house. Once the process was begun it was a daily routine for the next 3 to 4 weeks.(it takes 35 gallons of sugar water to make one gallon of maple syrup). As the sugar water evaporated down into maple syrup the heavier syrup would collect on the low end of the evaporator pan and we used a big dipper to take the syrup out of the evaporator pan and put it in 10gal milk cans so we could haul it to the house where Grandma would fill one gallon cans for retail. In 1965 a one gallon can of pure maple syrup sold for $72. (The maple syrup we buy in the grocery stores today is at best a watery substitute that is about 10% maple syrup and 90% corn syrup). I remember there was a thick yellowish gray clay in the creek that ran close to the sugar house, Us kids used to take potatoes and eggs and pack them in that clay and set them in the firebox. With about an hour the clay was dried hard as ceramic but when you cracked it open the potatoes or eggs were thoroughly cooked and that was our snack while working. If we were lucky we would get a nice clean snowfall, then we would take a dipper of the maple syrup out of the evaporator and pour it on the snow. Instantly the maple syrup cooled and formed a thick maple sugar candy. After the sugar run was over it would take about a week to collect all the buckets and stack them back in the sugar house and that signalled the end of winter activity. It was now time to begin spring plowing & planting.

Adele, I'll try to make this quick. Soil: fast draining, well aerated, quick drying. For rooting, 50% perlite or vermiculite and 50% coir (can eventually be replaced with cactus soil - not sure.) For planting, same qualities as above. Search this forum for "gritty mix". Water once when you plant the cuttings and do not water again till you see plenty of roots in your clear plastic bottles. Rooting hormones are not necessary - per se. Can be good, but many people found no difference. Personally, I use Clonex gel every once in a while. Especially on tough to root varieties. You definitely won't have to wait one year to see a leaf. You better not. Ha! Cuttings of decent quality should root in 6-8 weeks, some take longer, but you definitely should see growth. Flowers is a different story. Being in zone 5a myself; I can say that you eventually have to wait longer than two seasons to see blooms, but two seasons is a good time frame - do not expect too much and maybe they will surprise you. As for the rocks in the pots, many people use larger pebbles to weigh down their pots, so they won't get blown over. Additionally, the rocks collect heat over the day and release it over night, which is nice but these rocks can get pretty hot too and burn the base of your cuttings. I'd be careful. My plumeria go outside when night time lows are above 45F, usually around late April/May. They are out till the end of Sept./sometimes well into October. I watch for the same night time lows there. They should get as much sun as possible. Hope this clears some of your questions. Happy rooting and growing!